


A Superheroic Search for a Better World

by henghost



Series: My (non-fan)Fiction [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Satire, Suicide, Superheroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:28:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25745116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/henghost/pseuds/henghost
Summary: Melvin deserts his post and gets asked to join a terrorist cell.
Series: My (non-fan)Fiction [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1840654
Kudos: 1





	A Superheroic Search for a Better World

This is important: you can't see the effects of Melvin's power. He's strong -- don't get it twisted -- but when he hits you, you're out. There's no flailing. There's no screaming. Only a crushing psychic weight, and if you do manage to stand under it, it can only be to slit your wrists or blow your brains out or (as he witnessed once) impale yourself against a saguaro cactus. But most people aren't so strong. Most victims resign themselves to catatonia. 

#

After a few hours of breathless driving Melvin stops at a gas station. There’s a limo parked in the lot. This is in the middle of nowhere, somewhere just north of Virginia. There's also a homeless man with a wiry black beard leaning against the building. Melvin goes inside. He needs something cold to drink. This is the first place he's stopped since he began his desertion. 

But who's that at the cash register paying for a six-pack of Bud Light Lime? It can't be, can it? Yes, it is: that's Robert Downey Jr. Internationally renowned actor known primarily for his portrayal of Iron Man in the most recent adaptations of Marvel Comics. He's heckling with the pimply cashier. He's trying to get a discount. He's pointing at the Iron Man Funko Pops on the counter and going, "Don't you know who I am? I'm _him_! I'm the titular Iron Man!" Eventually the cashier relents, and returns ninety-seven of the hundred dollars RDJ had handed him instead of ninety-five.

Melvin buys a Hi-C Fruit Punch bottle for $2.45. The money is coming out of his first (and last) paycheck from the US Federal Government and from his leftover bar mitzvah cash. Around a grand in total. He hands the cashier whose name tag says "Phil" a five and asks him, "Was that...?"

Phil nods and says, "He comes here a lot."

"You gave him a discount."

"Last time I didn't," says Phil, and raises his other hand and it's mangled and badly burnt. "And this is what happened."

"Jesus," says Melvin.

“My boss is going to be pissed,” says Phil. 

Melvin goes outside. RDJ is talking -- yelling, really -- at the homeless man with the black beard. "Asshole!" he screams. "I just came here to get a couple bee-double-els and you have the nerve -- the gall! -- to try and trip me!"

"I'm sorry, sir," says the homeless man, who's dressed in three coats and is using a strip of cardboard as a blanket. "I swear I didn't. I wasn't even close to the door. I swear to god!"

"And now you're lying about it," says RDJ with ice in his voice. "If there's one thing I hate more than a tripper, it's a liar. Would you like to know what I do to liars?"

The homeless man goes, "Please, sir," but before he can finish RDJ's pristine white Air Force 1 has made contact with his face. And that's only the beginning. Melvin watches from a safe distance as Iron Man kicks the man again and again, each foot-to-face connection making a noise that could've come straight out of a superhero movie. The man is crying and bleeding and begging, but RDJ won't let up. He gets up close and stomps the man's head into the concrete once, twice, three times. After that there's silence. 

RDJ spits on the bleeding man then turns and looks at Melvin and straightens his leather jacket and starts to chuckle and shake his head and walk back toward his limo. Melvin thinks he ought to do something. He thinks maybe he should retaliate against Robert Downey Jr. on behalf of the innocent stranger. Melvin has so much power, after all. And what is it good for, if not this? At least he should call an ambulance.

Instead he does none of this. He climbs into his stolen car and follows RDJ's shining black limo all the way into Baltimore. All the while thinking: surely a better world is possible. 

#

That night he stays in a sleazy motel just off I-95. The man at the counter has a big oval head that juts back like a peanut. He gives Melvin a room for a good price, up on the third floor. The internet's atrocious but at least there's cell-service, so he calls the hospital's number and asks to speak to his mother.

"Mel?" she says in her smoker's rasp. "Mel, I've been watching the news. Is everything alright?"

"Don't worry about me, Mom. I’m totally safe. Don’t worry. And how many times do I have to tell you not to watch the news?"

"Where are you right now? Still in Virginia?"

"Don't worry about it, Mom. I'll be fine. Well, um, look. If they ask you about payments and stuff it might be a little while before I'm able to send it over. Don't worry about it."

"What? What's wrong? Is BOSS being difficult?"

"Something like that. Anyway, what's it like over there? Are they treating you well?"

"Oh, Mel. The same as it ever was, you know. Some days I look out the window and it's like the sun is gray. It's like the whole world is gray. There's nothing to do. The pills don't help. Sometimes I can't stop crying."

"Mom, just listen to the doctors. Let them help you."

"I love you, Mel."

"I love you, too."

And he hangs up. The hospital his mother is in is a private one called Better Life Mental Wellness Center. They both agreed it was the best option for her after she had to have her stomach pumped due to downing roughly sixty-five Ambien one night. The cost to keep her there is $9,678.04 a month -- they don't have insurance. BOSS had offered him insurance, but in the end he hadn't stuck around long enough to sign the papers and so on. When he can't pay, they will put her out onto the street without calling a cab.

He lies on the hard must-smelling bed and switches on his laptop and talks to Vlad for a while over instant-messages. He’s been speaking with Vlad since even before he joined BOSS. Vlad and Melvin see the world in the same way.

He says to him: I'm out. I'm free. I'm coming.

Vlad answers: Finally -- we need you now more than ever, M. We need your power. You have so much power and you don't even realize it. Meet me in Baltimore, at the AMC Theatre. You know the one, don't you?

That night he dreams of being on the Aragón front of the Spanish Civil War. He is tired and dirty and covered with lice, and the sky is matte-black except for the pinhole stars which burn like celestial candles above the deep, muddy trench. Then there's a sound. A footstep? He glances anxiously at his fellow militiamen, and they glance back. Then the footsteps turn to trampling, and they peer out over the low hills and see a black tide of Fascists, spearheaded by Franco himself. They aim their rifles and fire round and after round after round, but it's all in vain. They stand no chance. Their weapons often jam, and there are so many of the enemy out there, and soon Melvin and his comrades are overrun. A Falangist who can't be older than fifteen plunges his bayonet under Melvin's sternum, and he wakes up. He is filled with glee.

#

There's an arrest happening when Melvin arrives at the AMC Theater. Four piggish cops standing over a skinny man in handcuffs, prone on the asphalt, squirming. A few people are filming the scene with their phones. One of the cops kicks the man on the ground and yells, "Shut your fucking mouth!" although the man on the ground has said nothing. The people filming keep filming. Melvin thinks: disgusting. He goes inside.

It smells like butter and sweat in there. He kills time by gawking up at the lobby's high domed ceiling. It gives him this feeling like awe. Why does a movie theater need a domed ceiling? As if the whole place is some enormous mausoleum. He wonders what's entombed here. It must be something massive. Something unnameable. 

A few minutes later someone taps him on the shoulder, and he turns and this must be Vlad. He's never seen him in person before, they've only spoken online. Vlad is paper-colored, and right now he's wearing a black hoodie, which his round face peeks out of like a moon.

"Get here all right?" asks Vlad in his bad Russian accent.

"See those pigs outside?" says Melvin.

"Disgusting."

"Disgusting," Melvin agrees. "What movie are we seeing?"

Vlad buys two tickets for the latest superhero flick, appropriately, and they travel through the plush-carpet corridors, up inside the womb-like blackness of the auditorium, into the squishy red seats in the far corner. The only other people are a mother and her two children, toward the front row. Vlad eyes them suspiciously. The screen is playing an ad for some new action figure, over and over and over. 

"You are sure no one followed you?" asks Vlad.

"I'm sure. They were all distracted. The new Occupation."

"Oh god, of course. Every time I hear about what's going on down there I have to vomit. You know?"

"I know," says Melvin. "Trust me, I know. I know what it's like to be inside the vast imperial machine."

Then the ads turn to previews and finally the movie begins:

It's your standard alien invasion setup. Before the title sequence there's a scene of a farmhouse at night lit only by a greenscreen moon. And from the sky a spinning silver saucer drops onto the grass. It is all practical effects, the saucer, and incongruously low-budget-looking, like it's been stapled together with old refrigerator doors and plexiglass. Its hatch opens and out strut two nude Aliens. The Aliens resemble racist depictions of Africans you might find in a political cartoon circa the time European powers were dividing up the continent, although somehow with less edge. They find a cow grazing on the gray-green grass and jab a syringe into its rear and watch blank-faced as it trips and stumbles and finally falls to the ground with a satisfying thump. And then the Aliens' hands -- for lack of a better word -- glow with bright-blue light and the cow rises into the air. This way, they take him back to their ship. The hatch closes. They take off.

The title flashes on the screen, accompanied by a swooning cascade of horns. _Avengers: Homeland Security_.

Cut to: interior of the white concrete Avengers headquarters. Iron Man (played, as always, by one Robert Downey Jr.) lounges sans costume on a plush gray couch, speaking with Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson) and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). In RDJ's hand is a black and red device.

"This little tool," says RDJ, "is in fact the most powerful weapon on the planet. If I press the red button on its tip, all of my many creations will descend upon my person and eviscerate any potential threats to national -- and, indeed, global -- security."

"Hold on a second," goes Black Widow, "who gave you the right to all this power?"

RDJ and Nick Fury chuckle chauvinistically. "Oh sweet, sweet little girl," they say in unison. "What do _you_ intend to do when the Bad Guys come?"

This discussion drags on for quite a while. Maybe fifteen uninterrupted minutes of these three waxing pseudo-philosophical about the nature of violence and power. Eventually the conversation devolves into name-calling and crude gestures. There are some jokes regarding the fact that the detonator-thing is vaguely phallic, and here's Black Widow dressed like a dominatrix telling these big strong men that they can't have it, etc., etc. The family toward the front laughs hard at these.

When the talk dies down, sinister music à la _The Exorcist_ or _The Shining_ rumbles through the theater, and here come the nude Aliens from the previous scene. They blur into the room, at first half-translucent, and then fully there, fully real. Our three heroes jump up. CG red-yellow armor plates come flying from stages left and right, slap onto RDJ's skin, and that orchestral score shakes through Melvin's chest.

But the Aliens aren't violent. They hold up their hands, babble in their foreign language (which sounds like a broken synthesizer), and BW puts her hands on Iron Man's arm to prevent him from blowing the Aliens away with his palm-blaster. 

The kidnapped cow also blurs into existence and clip-clops against the concrete floor. She (the cow) is wearing a sort of vest (leather?) and a net of nodes around her head. And then she speaks: "My name is Shallot Cow. I shall act as interpreter between you, Avengers, and my benevolent caretakers, the Aliens." Shallot Cow speaks with an earthy timbre, her words like a bass-guitar.

"Fair enough," says RDJ. "What do the Aliens have to say?"

The Aliens whisper electronically into Shallot Cow's big flopping ear, and she nods her square brown head with every word. Then clears her throat and says in her golden voice, "The Aliens wish to unite our two worlds. They have studied this planet, Earth, for hundreds of years now, and have come to the conclusion that if things were to continue unimpeded, the human race would be destroyed, as would the planet. The Aliens, in their infinite compassion, do not wish this to occur, so what they propose is this: all human societies be integrated into the society of the Aliens, which is equipped to provide for all seven-billion or so of you. No one would have to move location, and the Aliens would maintain no power -- political or military -- over humanity. There would be no more starvation, war, suffering at all."

"Hm," says RDJ. "That sounds like bullshit to me," and then raises his palm-blaster and fires at Shallot Cow, misses by an inch. Shallot Cow howls low and long and fades into unreality again. The Aliens scream like severed power-lines, and raise their own arms in unison, a bluish glow around them. Nick Fury pulls his Beretta (9mm) from its leather holster and pulls the trigger again and again, but the bullets ricochet off the Aliens' black skin, which makes a noise like _ping ping ping_. Black Widow flounders for a few moments, her round lipsticked mouth failing to wrap around the words appropriate for her shock, then does the same as Sam L.J. and draws her own two pistols and bang bang bang.

The Aliens never retaliate, simply scream louder and louder, allow their blue light to grow and grow and grow, until, finally, they disappear into the greenscreen background. Our heroes eye each other warily.

Cut to: later at night, moon pregnant above the Avengers' HQ, RDJ and ScarJo sit on the same bed in some sequestered quarter of the building, looking down at their shoes, morose. 

Black Widow: "What were those things?" in her quavering voice. 

Iron Man: "The Bad Guys."

Then they kiss. The ambient music drops away and the only noises over the bone-rattling sound system are their smacking mouth-sounds. No cuts as the two remove on another's costumes, no attempt to cover up their nakedness. Melvin and Vlad watch on as the two engage in penetrative missionary-position sexual intercourse. Upwards of fifteen minutes of RDJ thrusting breathlessly, ScarJo panting and gasping. The scene finally ends when Tony Stark, a.k.a., Iron Man ejaculates practical-effects semen onto Black Widow's back in high spurting arcs, at which point one of the kids toward the front goes, Whoo!

The second act of the film is essentially all montage. The three heroes research more about the Aliens. They discover satellite images of their home planet, which is named Milkidor, and, at least to Melvin, Milkidor looks fairly Utopian. Green everywhere, tall furry fauna with surreal color schemes, e.g., a giraffe-looking thing with purple spots and a mane of glittering rainbow hair. The Aliens seem to have no leaders, no recognizable system of government. 

"We have to destroy them," says RDJ. "We have to protect our planet." 

Solemn nods.

When they have enough information they Assemble, which means finding Spider Man (Tom Holland) and pulling him out of his NYC high school. They catch him up to speed and get his input. 

Spider Man says, "I'm down for whatever you guys want to do. I would be so lost without my team to back me up. I wish more young people like me could find a team. The American youth is so, so lonely these days. If they helped out their fellow countrymen like I do, they wouldn't be so lonely. They could find a civil service job or even join the military by going to usa.gov/join-military."

Then back at HQ they don their respective costumes and armors, clamber into the Avengers' red and yellow space-plane, and blast off, the sky outside zooming past them like so much ticker-tape. Then cut to: the airspace of planet Milkidor. "Look at them all," says RDJ. "Animals. We have to get rid of them before they get rid of us. You all see what I'm saying?"

Solemn nods.

The plane lands on a strip of red and black grass, and the team climbs out onto the foreign land. They walk through the Aliens' city, which has an almost Afro-futuristic look to it. All of them look down at the residents in disgust (the Aliens are much shorter than humans). 

Finally they arrive at what is for all intents and purposes the Aliens' capitol building. Inside they find the Aliens they attacked earlier in the movie, and Shallot Cow, gathered around a star chart, discussing possible diplomatic options. When they see the Avengers they jump up and put their arms over their heads. 

The Avengers give their enemy no time to monologue. They open fire on the trio with the weapons Iron Man has invented to be especially effective against the Aliens. The Aliens and Shallot Cow stand no chance, and are soon reduced to dust and beef respectively. High-fives among our heroes.

But, oh no, what's this! In comes the Aliens' militia. There are so many of them. A full-on firefight ensues. Tom Holland becomes viscera after being hit by a beam of blue light. And the remaining Avengers are forced to retreat. It looks dire, low string music plays over the action, the shots of Tom Holland's glistening gore. 

This is when Iron Man pulls out the detonator and presses down on its bright red tip with his bloodied thumb. The camera zooms way out and flies through the galaxy to film a satellite in Earth's orbit whose hatches are opening, and out come a whirring and buzzing legion of drone-things, all painted to match Iron Man's suit. They zip through space, toward our struggling protagonists, their spinning propellers glinting in the starlight like knives. 

When the drone-things arrive on Milkidor it's a bloodbath. Or dustbath. The drone-things cut down whole fields of Aliens, first the militia fighting the Avengers, and then the rest of them, all throughout the city and eventually the planet. Iron Man cheers and Black Widow looks at him as if to say, I guess you were right.

And then, abruptly, credits. After which is the after-credits-scene, which has become a staple of the Marvel Movies, and which, against all odds, Melvin and Vlad find themselves wanting to stick around for. The scene depicts the living Avengers hosting a barbecue on the red and black grass. We can only assume the patties on the grill are made of the meat from Shallot Cow. They pour some Bud Light beers onto the ground out of respect for the fallen Spider Man. Black Widow and Iron Man kiss, and then settle in to watch the evening's entertainment, which consists of Captain America (Chris Evans) performing a minstrel show in gaudy blackface. Cut to: black.

Just like that it's over. It couldn't have been longer than ninety minutes. Perhaps to cater to the low attention-spans of the younger generation. The family at the front bursts into applause. Who for?

#

After the movie Vlad and Melvin eat at the Chick-Fil-A next to the AMC Theater, both order the fried-chicken sandwich with cheese plastered on top. 

"What a movie," says Vlad when they receive their food and have sat down in a vinyl booth in the corner. "All propaganda, of course."

"Of course," says Melvin. "But it was entertaining. And what can we do about it? Actually, you know, on the way here I saw that guy."

"Which guy?"

"Robert Downey Jr. He was at this gas station I stopped at, buying beer. Bud Light Limes, actually. He kicked the shit out of this homeless guy."

"Oh my lord. Did you do anything about it?"

"What could I have done?" 

"Ah, well that is what I wanted to speak with you about today, Melvin. We have recently been planning."

"Who's we?"

"You know, us. Our group of like-minded individuals, dedicated to combating the forces of reaction here on the eastern coast of the United States of America."

And then Vlad tells Melvin what they had been planning: the military has upped its recruitment efforts, due to the Invasion and the Occupation, the one which had caused Melvin to desert from the Bureau of Superhuman Soldiers (BOSS). In addition to increasing the severity of the sentencing guidelines that applied to Superhumans who refused to offer their services to the US Military, they had even begun to take incarcerated individuals who at the time of their conviction had been given the designation "Supervillain" out of the prison system and conscript them into BOSS.

All of which Vlad and his group of like-minded individuals found, to say the least, morally reprehensible. So what they wanted to do was use their considerable military power to wage a terroristic campaign against BOSS and the rest of the US Military, which they hoped would cause the relevant politicians to reconsider their war-mongering, or (this first option being admittedly unlikely) wreak enough havoc that resources would have to be diverted from the Occupation and the Invasion and rerouted to deal with Vlad et al., and thereby they would save potentially thousands of innocent lives.

Which is where Melvin came in. What was unique about Melvin's power was that it was impossible to see its effects, an extreme rarity for people with such a level of world-altering ability. The problem with Vlad et al. was that their offensive capabilities came with the sort of pyrotechnics and bloodshed that could only be reported on negatively. If Melvin were to spearhead their terroristic campaign, they could avoid that kind of bad press, which would lend their cause not only credibility but efficacy. 

"So how does that sound to you, Melvin?"

"Well, I'm not sure. I have to consider the monetary aspect. My mom's in the hospital, you know."

"I am so sorry to hear that. Listen, take the day. Consider it. Consider whether or not you are in a position to change the world."

#

Before he joined BOSS, Melvin worked as what the government would call a vigilante. Not that he had a missionary agenda. But he needed the money -- or rather, his mother did -- and in his naive moralizing he believed that it would be better to take the money from “criminals” and that sort.

He was aware of one such person. At the time Melvin lived with his mother in a housing project in downtown Richmond, and this housing project was understood in the broader community to be a place where you could buy various narcotics, and it was somewhat of an open secret who was organizing it all. This guy called Skip Restriptum. Restriptum was what you might call a local character. He dressed in furs. He was said to have dabbled in pimping.

So Melvin followed Restriptum over the course of two weeks. He learned his routes, his habits, his relations. And he overheard that he was planning on Sunday night to make a big deal at an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of the city. A classic comic-book setup. Melvin was ready. He was in control of his Power, he felt. So he donned the big overcoat and burlap mask that made him look like a scarecrow and drove his mother's old Civic behind Restriptum's Mercedes until they arrived. He lurked behind a stack of crates until he saw a man in a suit and tie hand over the duffel full of contraband, at which point he jumped out and sprayed his Beam everywhere. People dropped left and right, including the man in the suit.

But not Restriptum. Restriptum was strong, stronger than the rest, at least in between the ears, which was where it counted. So he got up close to the guy, who was maybe a foot taller than Melvin. He Beamed and Beamed, but still Restriptum would not go down.

Finally he had Beamed so much that it was like a switch flicked. Some auxiliary unit of Power that had until now remained hidden within him now opened its valve and exploded out of every orifice and pore. Restriptum's mouth turned down -- way down -- at the corners, and his eyes got this look like he'd lived through a hundred thousand lifetimes, and there was no more resistance. He turned his head like a drugged owl and settled his gaze on the forklift a few yards away and lumbered over to it, didn't stop when the prong got in the way. A noise like a sticker being peeled as he pushed the prong through his gut, the spot just under his sternum, and kept going like a swimmer against a current. Melvin watched this all with his mouth open, suddenly sapped of all his killer instinct.

When the forklift's prong had come out the other side of Restriptum and blood was all down his lower half, Restriptum said, "Jessie...."

Melvin asked, "Who's Jessie?"

"She was the cow I loved in my childhood. My mother murdered her for food."

And then he was dead.

Melvin took Restriptum's wallet and the wallets of all the other catatonic men, and then the duffel bag of cash that Restriptum had planned to spend on the narcotics, which he left there on the warehouse floor (he had no means of liquidating it, of course). Still the Power was coming out of him like sweat. He didn't know how to get it to stop. 

When he arrived home his mother was there to greet him. He took off his rough brown mask that was by now damp with sweat and showed Mom all the cash, and she looked at him reproachfully but didn't say a word. And then he hugged her, and she hugged him back, and the Beam slithered out of him like so many maggots and into her.

Three weeks later the incident with the bottle of Ambien occurred. Three weeks and two days later a woman working on behalf of BOSS came to speak with Melvin and said BOSS could help him pay for the treatment his mother needed and that all this extra-governmental use of his Power was illegal so actually he didn't really have a say either way.

BOSS wasn’t so bad at first. Better food than he was used to, and each trainee got their own room. They taught him more about his Power and documented his abilities. He spoke with his mother every day. 

But when he finally graduated the BOSS equivalent of a boot camp, one of the other recent graduates, this girl, in fact, who Melvin probably felt some attraction to if he was being completely honest with himself, came and told him that the next day they would all ship out to take part in the upcoming Invasion. And he panicked. No other way of looking at it: he panicked. He wasn’t ready for that. He couldn’t do what they were asking of him. So he hotwired a brown pickup truck in the lot of a local Walmart (this was in the middle of Buttfuck, Virginia) and drove away as fast as he could. Likely followed by no one.

#

Next afternoon Vlad calls Melvin. "Melvin, have you decided?" he asks.

"I don't think I can, Vlad."

"The disappointment I feel at hearing such a thing," says Vlad, "is impossible to overstate."

"I'm sorry."

"Why did you leave BOSS, Melvin? Because all this time we have been chatting I was under the impression it was a decision that you made due to having what some might call a conscience. That it was impossible for you to participate in an imperialistic exercise which could only cause destruction and despair in innocents because such an action would make it difficult to live with yourself. Were these thoughts mistakes, Melvin?"

"No. Not mistakes."

"Perhaps, then, you underestimated the role laziness played in your decision," says Vlad, and hangs up.

Melvin's phone rings again and he recognizes the number as that of Better Life Mental Wellness Center. He picks up.

"Melvin, I'm so sorry, but your mother has passed away."

"How?" asks Melvin without affect. 

"Well, there's no easy way to say it, but she took her own life. She hanged herself from her doorknob with a leather belt. We still have no idea where she got the belt. Would you like to make arrangements for her body?"

Melvin hangs up and lies on the floor and tries to cry but can’t.

#

A week or so later, after returning from his mother's funeral, Melvin switches on the TV and sees an apartment building in flames. The newscaster is saying, "...believed to be the actions of a cell of left-wing terrorists. Victims of the attack include popular actor Robert Downey Jr. who was staying in the penthouse at the top of Verdant Fields Apartments at the time of the blast." Cut to: a shot of RDJ's charred corpse, his blackened hand still wrapped around a beer-can. And Melvin smiles for the first time in a while and thinks: yes, a better world is possible.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback always appreciated :)


End file.
